FORT LIBERTY: VOLUME ONE (9 page)

He’s calm, his answer unapologetic and filled with facts, as if she’d asked for facts. “You were the less obvious choice, so safer. Your previous flight records made it seem less likely that you would get boarded.”

“Deductive man brilliance then?”

“I chose you because you’re good at what you do,” he says, intent on making the point. “And I need you to know that I’m good at what I do. That has to be an understanding between us.”

Maybe it’s a threat, but it could also pass for reassurance, and almost sounds like it’s meant to be taken in whatever way works best. Petra glares at him, temper bright, fists clenched, and still no truth between them, other than the knowledge of what power he’s got to do whatever he wants, and what power she hasn’t got to stop him… the man with the Rhys Corp auth key.

“Nothing’s changed,” he says, softer now. “We reach red orbit, and you’ll get paid exactly what you want. And, in the meantime, I promise you that I will do everything within my power to make sure that no harm comes to you, your cargo, or your ship. Don’t fight me for more, Petra. You don’t want to do that.”

“No?” she growls, kicking off the corner of a crate and nailing him in the chin with a right uppercut. The force spins them apart and he sails backward, thumping against a crate. It’s a soft thump, and he rights himself, glowering, his hand moving up to work his jaw in irritation.

She runs her fingers along the netting and pushes forward again, drifting toward him, prepared to set it all straight. “You think you can threaten me, and I’ll just cower down and accept such… from you? I’ve fought a few wars of my own, with no such budget as what Rhys Corp can afford—some of which included out-thinking smarter men than you, and burying them too.”

“Okay,” he says, putting one hand up, open palm, like he’s going to catch the next hit before it lands. “Petra—”

“Captain,” she hisses, swinging again out of pure anger.

This time, he catches her wrist and whips her around, tucking her body underneath his and holding her fast. There’s no moving, and no purchase to be gained from trying, but she tries anyway, attempting to jab her way free.

“Easy,” he says, not giving an inch. “I’m not trying to threaten you, Captain. I’m trying to work with you. I’m paying for passage on this vessel, a certain kind of passage, and then my team and I are gone… no need to outsmart us, or kill us in our sleep. If you’d just listen—”

She bites his hand because it’s close enough.

“Shit,” he swears, adjusting his grip without letting go. “Spitfire.”

“Let go.”

“When you’re calm. Breathe.”

Breathe?
She pushes against him, grits her teeth and tries to shove, cursing him until she’s got nothing left, until his arms, closed so tight around hers, gently squeeze all the fight out. He waits, his breathing calm and steady against her ear, their bodies locked together in slow zero G rotation. She falls silent because the anger’s drained, and he’s still there, and it’s obvious he’s not letting go until he wants to. He’s proven his point well enough.

One stupid miscalculation, one slip, and she’s lost the fight, only it doesn’t exactly feel like that because he’s not exerting pain where he could… not pressing his advantage, pointing out who’s the winner and who’s the loser, which is what she would do. He’s content to float, drift with her in a binding kind of quiet.

“Let go,” she says, teeth clenched.

“Don’t panic. Breathe.”

“I had every right to hit you… and I’d do it again.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“If you weren’t so big in the shoulders… ”

“It almost hurt,” he says. “Probably keeps the cabin boys in line.”

“But not war machines.”

He laughs under his breath, though his grip doesn’t ease. “We bruise each other up pretty badly when we’re bored. For us, it’s just… bonding.”

“Not trying to bond with you.”

“Breathe.”

She presses her lips together, at odds with giving in, doing what she’s told, no matter who’s doing the telling, or why.

“We’re not so different,” he says softly, like he’s contemplating something from a distance, and not holding her against him so tight she can’t move. “Some of the best soldiers start out as rule breakers and trouble makers. I was robbing local drug gangs to support my mother and sister when I got recruited.”

“Just trying to make me like you now.”

“Might be my only chance.”

“Let go.”

“I was wild,” he says, like she’s just asked him to keep going. “Even quicker to anger than you, hated authority, trusted myself and no one else… despised the thought of the Block12 and their treasure hoarding.”

“And so you decided to work for ‘em… perfect sense.”

“I led a group of boys, and that group put a serious crimp in some of the local drug business, and one night, a Rhys Corp team busted through the door and hauled me out by the collar. Older guys, team guys, good men. The contract they offered included jobs for myself and my friends, support for my family, a life of higher purpose… and citizenship.”

Petra frowns, trying to imagine him as a boy of any kind. It’s an image that doesn’t quite come, the younger, chaotic version of him impossible to pry out of the man who held her now, both rough and smooth, silver hair and a cool gaze.

“Combat is addictive,” he says.

“Is it?” She asks like she doesn’t want to know, but she does.

“Oh, yes, ma’am. As terrible as it gets, as quick, and violent, and ruthless, and unfair… it’s pure in all those things. It’s survival. It’s primal, trial by fire, and it changes everything, every minute, every action you take, every breath is meaningful. It’s a dizzying high… so much brighter, so much bigger, than time spent existing in the background. There’s honor in it because a lot of people are still getting fed on Earth because of it. They’re still getting supplied by the Block 12, when they wouldn’t be if we weren’t there. We sign the contracts. We adopt the code. We live by the ethos. We look forward to the rewards. At the same time, we’re still rule breakers, survivors who have come up from nothing.”

“That doesn’t make you and me the same.”

“It makes us similar though,” he replies. “And we both have to get to Fort Liberty with our respective cargoes intact.”

“An’ you think that means we work together no matter what.”

“Assaulters work in teams. We bond through beat downs, and drinking binges, and raging through firefights together, and it’s intense, and it makes the team sacrosanct. Team comes first, before the individual. Any one of us would give our lives to protect the other. That’s the way we survive.”

“Good crew is the same.”

“I believe you.”

“Good crew protects its own.”

“I imagine they do.”

“An’ plenty of times they die together. I… ”

He waits for her to finish, but she doesn’t, letting the admission trail off to nothing. There’s too much there, and he knows it somehow, and for one moment—one upside down, not-supposed-to-happen moment—it feels good to have him at her back, to not be alone when it comes up out of the shadows.

“I’m no threat to you,” he says. “I want you to trust me, even when I can’t tell you everything. The fact is that I
need
you. I can’t complete this mission without your help, and you can’t get compensated for your risk without mine. That effectively makes you part of my team… Captain. And it makes me part of your crew. Do we understand each other?”

Oh, he’s got a way, a powerful way, a man whose warm, and strong, and smart enough to not to offend in the same way twice. But trust, team, crew… none of those are simple agreements. None of those come without work, without time, without proof of character and intent. He’s asking for too much.

Still, smugglers who’ve got no intuition, got no gut feeling, or love of risk, don’t make the profit, or don’t live long enough to enjoy it when they do. He’s a man of purpose, and in all he’s said, all that bit about protecting team and mission, he’s left out the terrible workings of how that gets done. He’s left out the part about how he’s also a monster—like every living thing what fights to survive—and he had a choice when he was attacked.

Dominate, punish, kill, or… talk.

He chose talk. No punishment. No retribution against a person who’s smaller, arguably in a more vulnerable position.

There’s a lot that’s trustworthy in that, though the admission of it comes hard, and sits like a hot coal in her chest, a thing which threatens to burn through necessary defenses and open her heart up to lonely ache and utter foolishness.
Should never have shared vodka with an Assaulter who’s got blue eyes…

She draws in a breath, putting pieces together as best they fit. “Whoever you got stashed in that cabin must be damn important, and better be worth all the trouble Rhys Corp’s set to pay me for… some fat company calculator with a secret profit an’ loss sheet, cowering behind his Assaulters… giving ‘em an auth key to deal with rats like me and earn respect he can’t earn for himself.”

“Does that mean I’ve earned respect?” he asks. “Thought it would take at least a dozen more sucker punches to the face, maybe a surprise kick to the groin.”

It’s funny, and hard not to think so, though men who go in and out of seriousness so easy have always confounded her.

She shakes her head. “Jared.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You think I’m in a calmer way now?”

“You appear to be.”

She turns her face toward his, though he’s behind her, still safely out of reach. “So why you still holding on?” she whispers.

It takes a minute.

“Sorry,” he mutters, the grip of his hands easing.

He sets her loose, and she reaches for a crate cord, pulling herself upright to face him. And there they are. Not exactly part of the same team, or the same crew, but part of something else that’s got its own sway.

For a moment, there’s an uneasy recognition of it in his eyes, an acknowledgment of the intense curiosity that’s flooded up, all man and woman, mutual to the extent that he can see it in her too.

Not an ache she can hide, not with the talking she didn’t want, and the holding like never happens… And now there’s a hunger of the kind that’s not rational, borne of the cold distances which stretch in space and human lives, desires that burn too hot in a vacuum, bent on shared touch, and pleasure, and fucking the tension out, and basking in what peace comes after…

The lasting imprint of touch…
Petra, you idiot…

“Keep your executive out of sight,” she says, grasping for something—anything—to say what might befit a captain.

He nods, like he’s agreeing to let the moment go with these awkward words, as if he might, in fact, be grateful for them.

“Needed on the flight deck,” she says, wishing it was true.

“Look… with the security of the ship, we can help with that,” he replies.

“I know where you are, should we need such.”

He nods, satisfied to some degree, but still looking like he’s got too much on his mind that he’s decided not to say. He turns, pushing gently away from the wall and floating toward the tube, sailing past her on his way out.

“What happened,” she asks, needing to settle it before he goes, for some reason she can’t fathom the depths of. “All your crew are younger than you. Those original criminals of yours… ”

He looks back, maybe a bit surprised, but willing to answer all the same. “Most died in the first year. Some after.”

“And this crew… ”

“I’ve had a few since then.”

“How many?”

“A few.”

“And none surviving?”

“Wyatt’s been on every team of mine for about… ” He has to pause, think about it. “Eight years, almost nine.”

“Long time.”

“Yes.”

“Pilot’s been with me for almost the same.”

It goes quiet again.

“And what about your first crew?” he asks point blank, reminding her that he’s been listening too, and it’s not just a one-way connecting of the dots. “What about that first smuggling crew you mentioned, men who died and left you in charge. What happened to them?”

“They were old style criminals, and they perished as such.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“They were murdered.”

“By whom?”

Now there’s a question, and reason not to ask Assaulters anything, because they start asking back.
By whom?

She looks at him, delivering the truth without hesitation. “By me.”

TRANSPORT VESSEL WC2077
SPARROW

FLIGHT DAY 16/27

MARS DATE: DAY 14, MONTH 9/24, YEAR 2,225.

It’s in the comms, and in holo, in emergency light streaming toward Red Filter. The Rhys Corp cruiser is now blinking red on the grid, with reports of flash explosions on two decks and the whole ship listing without power… Data streams show a hull breach, the VIP compartments blown open, and a dozen executive bodies floating in the black. Even worse still, reports include twenty-two people who burned to death in sealed compartments, and another fifty-seven injured.

Goliath gone dark in the deep freeze.

Petra stares at the ship on the grid, as if she’s the captain of that behemoth, faced with locking down those compartments, giving those orders, even though—in her head—she’s hearing those people screaming through the comm, begging to get saved… people busy dying in the worst of ways.
Lock it down.

She’s been on a cruiser before, all shine and open corridors, palatial mess halls with oversized viewing portals and conference rooms cast with a pearl-like luster, life support units hissing thick white noise in all compartments, glass consoles and holos around every corner.

There is no greater symbol of power, of the glory and might of the NRM, than a sculpted metal cruiser floating in big sky and basking in its own light, immune to malfunction or attack.

“Wrongdoing,” Petra hears herself mutter.

“Those AI units don’t let bad things happen,” Clara agrees. “Measure everything to degrees not possible to comprehend. If something was heating up, there’d have been warning. And a hull breach? C’mon… ”

“What’s being said on the official?”

“Possible collision.”